Steam Audio now supports AMD TrueAudio Next; enhancing your VR audio experience with GPU power!

If you enjoy VR content, you will understand that audio can either make or break the immersion of the whole experience. With Steam Audio 2.0 beta 13, support for AMD’s True Audio Next has been added. This allows VR content to offer more detail while not negatively affecting performance.

TrueAudio Next allows developers to reserve a portion of the GPU exclusively for audio processing. Up to 20-25% of a GPU’s CUs can be dedicated for audio processing, and it can be set on a scene-by-scene basis to deliver maximum graphics performance in more taxing scenes.

Developers also have more freedom to use OpenCL for audio convolution. Using the GPU to model various acoustic phenomena allows VR titles to offer deeper immersion, while freeing up the CPU to handle other tasks like game AI and more. The GPU is also several times faster than the CPU at convolution, as seen in the graph above.

Basically TrueAudio Next allows for developers to use the GPU for processing audio with greater complexity than possible with the CPU, while freeing up CPU resources to offer a smoother gaming experience. All that is done without slowing down the graphics performance. For more information, check out the following blog post by Steam.

Pokdepinion: AMD has always been leading in terms of compute, and it’s great to see them put it to good use to enhance the gaming experience as well.